What color is your button?

I’ve attended more copywriting and marketing seminars than I can remember. At this stage, 95% of the material is no longer fresh. I attend because I enjoy the material (and sometimes the location) but it’s that 5% that I learn that helps me help my clients gain a boost in conversion.

Last January, I was in New York City for an info-marketing seminar run by a couple of grizzled veterans. One of the sessions focused on conversion gains.

With about 10 minutes to go, one of the speakers said, “Oh and I almost forgot … we tested the background color of the CTA button and a light orange works best for us.”

News to me.

Are you paying close attention to your call to action (CTA) buttons? Are you testing the copy?

You might not enjoy a 325% increase in conversion from testing your CTA buttons. But with some simple testing, you can expect a 10% to 15% increase… perhaps more.

So in this blog, let’s take a deep look at those CTA buttons so you can gain some ideas and start testing.

Let’s start by taking a look at the big marketers

Remember, we focus on these big marketers because we know they:

Have the huge traffic

Test like crazy

Here’s a page from L.L.Bean.

Here’s REI.

And here’s Amazon.

We can already see a thread. We see an orange/burnt orange as the background with white type. We also see some type of graphic—a finger, small arrow, or shopping cart. We also see clear instructions to the customer:

Buy now with 1-click

Add to cart

Add to bag

These brands have clearly tested the magic color. Plus they’re following one of the most important rules of direct response copywriting: tell the reader/buyer what you want them to do.

Now let’s dive a little deeper and get into the all-important transaction pages.

Get Free Strategies or find out how to work with us. In other words, you’re going to contact us… or you’re going to contact us. Take a small step… or a big step.

The copy on this page is fine, and the CTA button stands out with a contrasting color.

But I would write something more exciting. Perhaps…

Yes! Show Me How to Lose Weight!

Click Here Now to Lose Weight!

Click Here for a Slimmer You!

On the big Internet marketing sites where the company is selling everything from backpacks to bananas, the CTA buttons has to be generic. However, when you’re selling just one product, and thus one big promise, you can be much, much more specific.

This conference takes place in the fall so you can get a discount for signing up. The CTA is currently built around the early bird discount.

Notice that the button does adhere to the burnt-orange-family rule. But here I question the strength of that decision. How easy is it to see the call to action? In this case, a contrasting color would have probably worked better.

Don’t follow rules because they work for other brands. Test them on your own site to know what work for your site and your audience.

6 rules for CTA buttons

Let’s go through some simple steps you can take to optimize your CTA buttons and copy.

Imitate the big digital marketers.

Test your CTA color buttons.

Test the position.

Test the size of the button.

Test graphics in and around the button.

Test new copy. If you have a sprawling site, you may need something generic. If you have a single product or service, be more specific with the CTA.

In general, I’m firmly in the camp which says, “only really poor copywriters use exclamation marks.” I avoid them (exclamation marks … not copywriters).

Many copywriters use exclamation marks way too much!!!! However, they can be fine in the CTA button. Again… test away.

When I see a company that’s clearly working hard on their CTA buttons, I know they’re serious about testing. I also know they’re serious about finding incremental ways to improve conversion and become elite-level marketers.

Scott Martin is a direct response copywriter based in Charlotte, North Carolina. He has also written or edited 18 books including The Book of Caddyshack: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Greatest Movie Ever Made. Scott provides free resources for marketers including direct response checklists.

Comments

There is no doubt all those big brands like the likes of Amazon and REI all had similar call to action and I do love it the most when as your first you made it clear to imitate these big brands.
If these brands are imitating each other and receiving those needed conversions, what makes us different?
This is was a great piece Martin.
Thanks for this and don’t forget I found this post shared on kingged.com

Trackbacks

[…] Crazy Egg even goes so far as to advise looking at what the very top brands are doing with their CTAs (colour, placement etc.) and seeing how many of these styles can be incorporated into a site. If people are used to clicking an orange button, give them an orange button. […]

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